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A
transference of love
In this first
collection, States of Mind and Love, Riccobono provides
readers with a fascinating catalogue of similes, which stands for
her dynamic and passionate vision of the world. In the Author’s
Note, she introduces the idea of life as a journey through
“states” of mind, then, she brings in the notion of living one’s
life like dancing Tango, and finally – quoting Baudelaire and
Pessoa – she compares poetic inspiration to a bunch of fragrant
flowers, with each flower blooming into a lyric poem.
Riccobono explains the impacts of this mandatory journey on the way
she dances, writes, and works, as well as on the way she loves. She
compares writing poetry to a choice she makes each day to offer a
response to the most significant challenges she must face on a daily
basis. By means of poetry, dancing and travel, humans may attain
peace: peace is harmony, and harmony is perfection achieved through
both motion and aesthetic contemplation. Peace corresponds with the
ability to reach the very core of poetic awareness, where life may
find new, substantial forms of energy.
When poetic language returns to its source, its energy too is
recycled and amalgamated into the cosmos, as in the idea of an
Anima Mundi, reconciling all that exists. Gracefulness and
harmony is attainable through intuitive thinking, there where poetry
blossoms into hope, joy, sadness, desire, or reverie, with each
flower possessing its unique scent. These flowers make clear their
non-verbal ‘languages’, which everybody can understand and learn.
Whereas the poems deal with the practical use of these non-verbal
forms of communication, introducing a rich variety of themes and
contexts, allowing readers to become familiar with the poet’s life
style, the Author’s note speaks of how we can approach this
volume on a more theoretical ground.
Some of the poems here included, such as ‘4,378 Miles to go’, ‘Ireland-Bound’,
‘Post-modern Holland’, deal with departures, whether from home,
dance-floors, stations, airports, relationships, or mental states,
as in ‘ To K, his Legend’:
And so you dance: out of your scapulae
wings are born that lift you high
on the stage, allow you to skim the floor
without falling, but even so it’s improvised.
Wings that make you travel slow motion, light
speed to that internal space where you are free –
like me, here, while I write.
Wings similar to dancing limbs suggest the need to re-signify one’s
life and move forward to an understanding of one’s true potentials.
In another poem, ‘Post-modern Holland’, we find the idea of life as
a minimalist, circular journey:
During that tedious talk in Antwerp,
as Sebastian was preparing
his speech for later, and the after
lunch hour was much heavier
than we hoped, a yellow butterfly
came in through the window and danced
light circles around us.
‘Thank you for your attention’
We clapped our hands.
The butterfly’s circles create marvel and knowledge for the viewers
caught in the insect’s delicate center of energy, which suddenly
takes them up into a change of consciousness, allowing insight into
what is happening around them. The butterfly, in the author’s eyes,
follows a metaphoric trajectory to seize and embody life’s rhythms.
The imagery shows that the poet has herself hung out with these
rhythms long enough to catch, both physically and intellectually,
their intimate beat. The closing line, ‘We clapped our hands’,
underscores a moment evoking a perishable beauty, as it is
frequently the case in this collection.
All together, these poems enact – sometimes ironically – forms of
transition. As ‘departures’, they imply regeneration. The idea of a
journey into different ‘states of mind’ becomes itself a metaphor
for the poet’s experience of self-awareness. Certainly, Riccobono’s
voice, which uses English as a foreign language, offers a
counter-narrative to the long tradition of how a woman’s life as
mother, lover and intellectual is considered, making readers aware
that, although life has boundaries, there is always some further
work to be done, action to be attempted to (re)gain autonomy, as in
‘Insomnia’, where Riccobono reveals deliberately the dynamics of her
character, in a self-regulating moment of introspection:
Her new thoughts were turning
her on, yet she was relaxed, she had to plan on to the detail, but
not too quickly. She needed time to fit in every single idea, to put
some order in her mind that had been awoken to the point of no
return-so many thoughts in so few hours. She had to learn to wait
for the right time, as she was sewing her plan together. […] No-one
would order her any longer, no-one would impose anything from now
on.
Always witty and emotionally subtle, Riccobono’s style embraces the
many ways imagination can move ahead to prevent the artist’s
practical life to be carried along with unwanted circumstances.
Travelling, dancing and writing symbolize her vital need to continue
her life journey optimistically, allowing her talent to recharge
itself and move each time to new ‘states of mind’.
If setting one’s mind to writing poetry is a departure from that
existential enclosure that prevents the free expression of one’s
true feelings, then the way this book’s four sections flow into each
other perfectly illustrate how Rossella Riccobono has imagined her
poetry, attuning it to the kind of discourse that Julia Kristeva has
called a ‘transference of love’.
Erminia Passannanti
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* * *
Tattoo
Accept this final message
written in black ink on my ankle,
over the same space where a sand fly
bit me last year. It didn’t hurt
that much – expectation
was more painful, atrocious.
It’s Arabic, lacey, still soaked
with solar heat, the same
that scorched my skin
when I, without suspecting
you existed – yet I knew your eyes
in many a dream – visited Oman,
Nizwa, Muscat, bright
heatherless Scottish hills,
only no rain, no clouds.
If it can’t be love, let it be
friendship. Habib. A word.
But on my skin, permanent
symbol, engraved –
friend warrior lover miracle perdition.
It’s a gift.
Wellington, September 2003
* * *
4,378 Miles to Go
How shall we employ
the eternal enemy, time,
that sounds as always,
inexorably short before my choice
is made: 12 hours and I shall be yours.
‘Your name won’t come up
on the computer screen, m’am.’
Perhaps a variable route
opens its door to me.
‘You were on the 10.30 to Auckland
this morning.’
Perhaps the destiny arrow
will point to a different direction –
the compass is spinning fast.
Perhaps I won’t be yours at all.
‘You’re lucky m’am, there is
one more seat. You’re on!’
Lucky is a debatable word.
Wellington, July 2003
* * *
7 Flights in 6 Days
I M U S T F L Y A G A I N
C O N F U S I O N
O F H O U R D A Y Y E A R
W H E R E A M I ?
I’M
S T I R
D A M N
On a KLM Airline plane, July 2003
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